When modifying a WSDL, re-)generating the client code the code generator
and then trying to "explore" the webservice the plugin tries to start
the server (Tomcat 5.5 in my case).

This presumably minor step is getting more and more on my nerves. The
determination of server state seems to be extremely brittle and so the
displayed state in "Servers" and the actual server state are frequently
getting out of sync, i.e. the plugin "thinks" that the server is running
when it is not or that it is NOT running, while it still is.

When the server is already running (or at least the plugin thinks so...)
the code-generation invariably hangs, i.e. I always have to make
super-sure that the server is stopped.
And when the plugin "thinks", that the server is still running (when it
is not) one gets into a catch 22: after a timeout it only offers the
choices to stop the server or to continue waiting. But since the server
IS already stopped one can only restart eclipse to get out of this
situation.